Gaelic gets its own edition of Scrabble

The word game Scrabble has been made available in Gaelic for the first time.

The new edition features 18 characters, rather than 26, because the Gaelic alphabet does not use the letters J, K, Q, V, W, X, Y or Z.

The grave accent, a mark indicating that a letter should be pronounced a particular way, also appear on the vowels À, È, Ì, Ò and Ù.

Stornoway-based cultural centre and community café, An Taigh Cèilidh, worked with Tinderbox Games in London to license the Gaelic version of the game.

The board and rules are in Gaelic and the number of letters reflect their frequency of use in the language.

The letter scores match how difficult it is to use the letters to spell a Gaelic word.

An Taigh Cèilidh director Dr Teàrlach Wilson approached Tinderbox Games in 2021 to ask about the possibility of making a Gaelic edition of the popular game.

A Gaelic Scrabble World Championships is to be held in Stornoway on 9 December to mark the game going on general sale next month.

Dr Wilson said: “I can’t wait to play.

"But if I win, people will think it’s rigged and, if I lose, people will question whether I should have my PhD in Gaelic."

Tinderbox Games chief executive Jim Harrison added: "It's great to see this latest version of Scrabble joining our successful Welsh and Irish editions, thanks to a lot of hard work over the last couple of years from the team at An Taigh Cèilidh.

"I hope everyone enjoys playing it as much as we enjoyed making it."

Gaelic speaker Coinneach MacLeod, who writes recipe books under the name the Hebridean Baker, said he had received messages from friends in the US, Canada and Australia saying they were looking forward to seeing the game..

He told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland: "This is fantastic. I am so excited about it.

"In isolation this probably won't save the language, but everything makes a difference.

"The goal here is to celebrate the language in different ways."